Silent Victim - C. E. Lawrence [103]
Elena was about to pick herself up off the floor when she felt a strong hand seize her by the shoulder and lift her to her feet. She turned to see the bartender towering over her. Up close, he looked huge—easily six and a half feet tall, at least 250 pounds of muscle. He moved with the oiled grace of a ballet dancer.
“You okay?” he asked, his stern face softening as he wiped the grime from his hands. The floor was filthy, and Elena shuddered at the thought of the disgusting organisms now crawling over her skin. Her one weakness was an intense squeamishness regarding germs and dirt—a fear she had never shared with anyone. Excessive cleanliness was a stereotypical German trait, so she kept her phobia to herself.
Now, however, she had to fight panic as she brushed the dirt from her clothing. “Don’t you have a bouncer in this place?” she asked the bartender.
“Yeah—me,” he said. “Violet’s a newcomer,” he added with a glance in her direction. There was no sight of her or Matt—they had already been swallowed up in the perspiring press of bodies. “She’ll get over it,” he continued. “She and Matt were an item last week, but he’s always on the lookout for fresh talent. Tough titties, but that’s the way it goes.” He lit a cigarette and held out the pack. “Want one?”
Elena stared at it. She hadn’t smoked a cigarette in over ten years, since before she left Germany. It was all the rage in the Hamburg cafés—when she was a young actress she took up the habit to appear more sophisticated, even smoking one during a song in her nightclub act. But then her favorite uncle got throat cancer and she gave it up overnight.
“Sure, why not?” she said. Her hands trembled as she plucked a long, thin white cigarette from its cellophane wrapper. Holding it under her nose, she slid it slowly from one end to the other, inhaling deeply. The smell of raw tobacco brought back memories of her Hamburg days with unexpected vividness. Suddenly she was lounging against a shiny grand piano in a shimmery gold lamé dress, slit all the way up her thigh, a cigarette in one hand, a microphone in the other, crooning cabaret songs to an audience sitting in the darkness on the other side of the spotlight.
She slid the cigarette between her lips and leaned forward as the bartender held up a silver lighter and flicked the flame into life. She sucked in the smoke, held it in her lungs for a moment, and exhaled. Then she coughed violently, her head spinning as she grabbed his arm to steady herself.
“Been a while?” he said.
“Yeah,” she acknowledged. When the coughing subsided she took another drag, this time not taking in so much smoke. Her head continued to spin, but she managed not to cough. As the nicotine flowed through her bloodstream, she felt her body relax. Some things you never forget.
She looked at the bartender, who was headed back to his post behind the bar. An impatient-looking man in tight black pants was waving a fistful of dollar bills at him.
“Hey,” she called out to him. “What’s your name?”
He glanced back at her as he ducked under the counter.
“Everyone calls me Diesel.”
She thought that was a strange name, but she just nodded. “I’m Lottie.”
“Pleased to meet you, Lottie.”
“And you.” She gazed at him with admiration. Now here was a man you’d want on your side in a tight spot, she thought. Calm, intelligent, and so powerful looking that she guessed he could take on three men at once without flinching.
“I’ll have another beer, please,” she said. He pulled out a bottle and snapped off the cap in one fluid motion.
“It’s on the house,” he said, smiling for the first time that night.
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
By the time Elena left the Jack Hammer it was after three a.m. The party was by no means wrapping up inside, but she had had enough.